THIS is the terrifying moment when four tearaways risked their lives by running out in front of a train travelling from Coventry to Birmingham.

The youths lay in wait in a dugout on the bridge until the train was just yards away.

Pulling down the hoods on their jackets in the hope of concealing their faces, they leapt out and scampered across the line.

With no thought for their own safety, they ran up the track to the end of the bridge on the other side where they hastily clambered over the wall and fled down the bank.

Their deadly game of chicken was captured by the Evening Telegraph on Wednesday afternoon last week when we rode in a cab with Central Trains to experience the hazards that drivers face every day.

Fortunately, we had spotted the youths on the bend in the distance and we were able to alert the driver, Tony Pountney, as he prepared to pull out of Stechford station. He cautiously drove the train at no more than 20mph as he approached the bend.

"If you hadn't been here with me, I wouldn't have seen them because they were on the bend. I would have come round at my normal speed and then had to slam on my emergency brakes," said the driver.

Tony stopped the train and put on his orange safety vest before climbing out of the cab to walk along the track to the nearest phone from where he could report the incident to the signalman.

The signalman in turn alerted British Transport Police and other train drivers, warning them to drive cautiously.

Until the area had been given the all-clear, every driver passing through had to stop to phone the signalman to receive instructions.

Tony got back into his seat and continued on to Birmingham's New Street station.

"Things have definitely got worse," said Tony, who has been a train driver for more than 25 years. "And not just with children either. It's adults as well."

Tony, aged 53, considers himself lucky. He has never been seriously hurt by a vandal and his train has never hit a trespasser.

One of his closest calls came when a vandal hurled a brick through the windscreen of a train he was driving.

"I was frightened to death to open my eyes," he recalled. "I finished up in hospital."

The fear of his train being attacked by vandals or being confronted with trespassers is always at the back of his mind. Will it be his turn today?

"I don't want to finish up in a coroner's court," he said.

Shopping trolleys, washing machines, television sets, gas bottles, fire extinguishers. He's seen them all on the lines.

Stechford has become one of the most notorious sections on the Coventry to Birmingham line. It has taken the place of Lea Hall, which used to be known as "Bomb Alley".

"I don't know the answer," Tony said, shrugging his shoulders.

"We were attracted to trains when we were kids but we just looked at them."